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TOTW: Drugs

May

06

2019

104

By thecollective

This week we’re talking about drugs.

As an anarchist what do you think about drugs and drug use in the radical community and society at large? What is your relationship to drugs like? How have drugs shaped (or not) your approach to anarchist ideas?

What can we do as anarchists to help our friends and family make it through some difficult drug related issues, like anarchist alternatives to alcoholics anonymous, needle exchanges, the opioid crisis, and other resources to help through dark times?

*Whispers* I am the invisible ghost of euphoria who has been abandoned by the capitalists, replaced by an alcoholic pharmacy of destructive negative numbing drugs which create no joy or e.u.p.h.o.r.i.a. in the living and dreaming experience.

I don't like it when anarchists are high in public, I mean at meetings, and the like. That's a personal preference for myself too, I like to have my wits about me in public.

My own drug use has not really impacted my anarchism except for noticing how drug laws are useless and enforced mostly to control minority populations, and then noticing that about most laws.

The issue is addiction more that drugs per se. And we in this culture have addictions to more things than drugs, like fossil fuels, the internet, speed (as in traveling fast), being right & feeling superior. Anarchists have not escaped these, for the most part. So for myself the question becomes, how do we undo addiction as a survival strategy? As well as how do we undo addiction as a coping mechanism.

lead is a powerful neurotoxin. kids in Boyle Heights and in East L.A. were found to have high levels of lead in their body due to living nearby a battery recycling plant.

is “addiction” a useful framework to curtail use, but more importantly the production of electronics (since the amount of devices with batteries pollute more or less the same regardless of if the person is addicted or not)?

it's a broad topic. many different things are drugs.
they can be produced and consumed in different ways.
some are addictive, some are not. they have different effects.
even picking one specific drug at random, and limiting the conversation to that, it's still a complex topic with a long history that can fill volumes. this can be said about many topics, it doesn't make it less true.
to contrast, last week's topic was around a specific scenario. maybe someone or each can think of specific scenarios they would have dealt with and think and comment around that.
i'll mention those that come to mind:

-medicines, including those to treat chronic conditions and illnesses and health insurance

-HRT

-coffee, caffeine, and energy drinks in the context of work/jobs night shifts

First off, let’s just say that I think recreational or medical drug use is not related at all to anarchist practice. Having said that, I can see how experimentation with drugs can help deepen the ideas behind ones anarchist practice or whatever, or how if you really want to dig deep come up with anarchist projects around drugs / drug cultivation / sales / spirits (all legal of course, dear officer).

Related to the practice, it seems like some of the big anarchist informants over the years have been people who have had a problem with drugs and it was used against them. Can you trust anyone anymore or do you need to remain Stone Cold Steve Austin #1 stunna 3:16 24/7?

In the MSM, Denver is thinking of legalizing the sale of magic mushrooms this month as other states in the USA seem to heading towards legalization / decriminalization of marijuana., it’s also just been reported that researchers in Bolivia found a 1,000+ year old 3 fox snouts satchel of drugs containing “the presence of multiple psychoactive compounds—cocaine, benzoylecgonine (the primary metabolite of cocaine), harmine, bufotenin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and possibly psilocin (a compound found in some mushrooms)—from at least three different plant species (likely Erythroxylum coca, a species of Anadenanthera and Banistesteriopsis caani).” Pretty fucking cool, that cool shit like this has been going on since like, forever.

One thing for sure, today - the marijuana industry is smoking and making a ton of money. So are small breweries and vintners as local bevs become the go to. Here is, within it all, for me, one of the most evil parts of drugs: the history of modern medicine, pharmaceuticals, capitalism, and the State. All that shits gotta go. Except modern medicine is pretty cool (diseases what not, although, research can be pretty fucked up as well, need to know more before drawing line in pen).

Hey y’all if for some reason you are wondering what's wrong with 12 step programs look at this zine we just put out. "Theses 12 steps Could Kill You: An Anti-Authoritarian Critique on Alcoholics Anonymous".

Great read, thanks for the contribution.
I found several typos while reading it, just a heads up.
Maybe they can be corrected in time before they're available at the Green Scare Anarchist Bookfair May 11th-12.

are so radically different than anything else called a drug, that I don't like to discuss them under the general topic of "drugs".
A lot of this depends on your motives for working with LSD and/or psilocybin.

i would add peyote to acid and mushrooms in that box you are creating (though why you feel compelled to do such categorization is beyond me).

i agree, truly psychedelic experience is life-changing and dramatically different from most other "highs" i have experienced (which are plentiful). and while i would prefer a world without human-made chemicals, acid has been my favorite since i first tried it at 14. at close to 60, i find much less desire these days for such experiences, but i still will chip a bit once in a while.

isn't man-made. It grows wild free of charge.
The Authorities will give me a break on my sentence if I rat out my dealer.
My "dealer" is God, and God doesn't even charge me anything.
And so, a warrant for the arrest of God, that nefarious global psilocybin kingpin, will be issued.
But, but . . . you CAN'T arrest God, God is infinite.
"That's BESIDE the point, we HAVE to stamp out these TERRIBLE drugs!"

Something I noticed here. Nature provides psychedelics ALREADY in high doses, which is the appropriate way to work with them. Not only are they non-addictive, psychedelics have built-in anti-addictive properties: if you take them every day (inappropriate) they quickly have no effect.
Nasty narcotics like cocaine (a venal "high"), and crack (never tried it), are the result of lots of artificial refinement. The coca leaves nature provides are low dose, and I suspect less harmful.

I'm with Bad Kitty on that... As far as your drugs come straight from the wild and weren't "doctored" by some jackass chemistry graduate students with highly-dubious ethics, I would encourage anyone to at least experience those, for pushing the doors of perception. Just salvia divinorum made me see things that completely shake up your perception of reality.

Leary was partly right when saying that everyone should be handed over LSD. Even if I did have a really good, funny time doing LSD back in the days, I wouldn't recommend such chemical shit. Leary was a shill for one of the first major drug lords of the US and also a reckless promoter of the pharma industry, yet the underlying claim that mind-expanding substances would help overthrowing the social relationship is correct, imo.

I've been a druggy a lot of my teenage and adult years, the only difference is that I've switched the drugs. Now adays my thang is black tea, CBD products, a little bit of alcohol. Overall I don't like marijuana even if i end up smoking it sometimes, weed now adays is very strong and fucks with my head, fuels some of my other shitty personality tendencies. I also have a more difficult time paying attention if im stoned in general, however, sometimes it does the exact opposite, and I'm hyper focused, spiritually high.

I assume that all drugs effect everyone different, even if certain drugs have a nature. I've never understood on a personal leve the appeal of heroin and pain killers, i've tried them both and i just didn't like how numb they make me feel.

The problem is never the drugs, it's the people who use them, and the culture surrounding the drug use. Native americans didn't do drugs in the same way we do until the colonization occurred. In america we there's generally people who believe that excessive drug use is appealing, good, crazy, cool, i no longer feel this way after having done so many drugs...

As another poster mentioned, for some people adrenaline has become their drug of choice, AND ITS FREE, but at the cost of making life unbearable for everyone around them with their hyped up hysterical narcissistic behavior and over the top shallow relationships which lack depth and any element of empathy. Loud, alpha roaring petrol addicts projecting and compensating for their own inadequacies, sad :(

as someone who would like to drop 98% of alcohol consumption (damn are belgian, german beers, bourbon, and rum from barbados delightful sips with a book or a good film tho) for cbd and thc when i do imbibe smoke or an edible (an entirely different substance of the plant processed by the liver in its own specific way) it’s so dose dependent on the strain. i really don’t want to feel stoned unless i’m alone (and therefore comfortable to all of the projections of past and future the plant can make one confront about personal trajectory). just a little goes a long way, unless i can guarantee it’s the strain best for me to remain completely mind and body balanced.

meditation helps. also just letting go, which is what psychedelics teach one. one doesn’t have to acknowledge all of one’s thoughts (not only meditation but stirner can help teach not to sacralize Thought), nor act on thinking, or read too much into ones train of thoughts. being, and breathing are more important than abstractions. great for improvisational music, or where all of the trains of thought the plant shows can be acted on, taking risk, with little consequence in such musical formats designed to challenge formal narrative.

it’s the same with the algorithm screen. it presents a heightened reality, that needs your negativity so you’ll participate, helping it financially. one has to learn to filter signal versus noise. humans make a lot of noise, and a lot of artificial blue light. the constant bombardment to compare one’s self with others inculcates a most toxic, desperate narcissism in the face of a wide chasm of loneliness (due to how much time one is now devoted to a glowing box).

there is no such thing as a "drug problem" as i see it. it's all human problems. the ways people choose to self-medicate are infinite, drugs just being one set of many. what about the straight-edgers who binge on sugar and caffeine (both are drugs, btw)? the "recovered" alcoholic who smokes 3 packs a day? the sex addict who shoots up so they don't run out to get laid 3 times that night?

a much more interesting question is: why do so many feel the need to medicate?

Its actually a work problem, workaholics. Inadequacies and low self-esteem brought about by the modern industrial capitalist society's majority of proles never having the opportunity to develop a self-awareness and individualist pride in their own power. They are just rats on a treadmill whose minds have not perceived broader possibilities. Ohhh if only Stirner had been read at kinder school, life on Earth would be soooo immaculate, sigh :>(

I was gonna say it's like we're all blind and only in touch with part of the elephant.

But I think most of these responses so far are touching on crucial issues, even if some seem contradictory to others.
Like one day I'm motivated to get high to escape but on another day I'm motivated by wanting to connect, as a simple example.

stress from the creation epic stored at the earth's core that extends into biological life and makes matter inherently unstable. There is a star burning in the center of the earth as hot as the sun. The earth has always been dynamic and so are we. The problem I see is an excess of power, the world is awash in solar radiation, some people shoot dope with it some inhale smoke and others swallow shit. Read this and you'll have the whole story:

It's work and running on fumes. Stress and pressure coming from far too many angles of attack simultaneously. Is there a significant gap between the evolution of our brains and what we are made to put up with in modern society? Is an opioid crisis or a mass shooting surprising in the same world where shopping is marketed as a form of therapy? I more often hear people talking about the need to dissociate after work, whereas it used to be called 'relaxation', often in the form of netflix, instagram, or youtube. Ex facebook engineers admitted to building the system of 'likes' to induce a dopamine hit. Drugs and alcohol have been used by governments to quell rebellions or to further the genocide of so called surplus populations. We are only beginning to try to muster enough wherewithal to understand what a project of subverting the cybernetic imposition on our lives could look like beyond "just destroy it", and frankly, I don't see that happening.

If we equalize everything, then yes heroin is no more of a problem than refined sugar. But tell that to someone trying to kick a junk addiction. Sweets dont make you rob your own family. I dont think what you are saying is a gotcha against straight edge, sobriety, or recovery. There is differences in degree of addicitive substances or acitivities and their consequences. I agree that modern industrial capitalist mass society is one of if not THE driver of addicition or finding ways to cope. I don't fault people for not being able to wait till we are rid of this world to try to get their head clear some amount. So maybe framing things in terms of addiction isn't the most useful. Its not all or nothing. Anarchists right now, sadly, don't have a lot going on as a colorful and enchanted alternative to the dreary numbing world we inhabit. Some of my best natural highs have been in the world of anarchy.

There's sooo much hype about drug wars and terrorist wars when its actually the State creating diversions and redherrings from its own mega-addiction to accumulating money and capital and raping and pillaging the whole planet of its energy and resources. Its come down to a total rampant parasitic group of minority power brokers who are addicted to status, power and wealth. THAT IS THE ADDICTION WHICH SHOULD BE TARGETED!!!

but some people run into problems when they put all their eggs in one basket and fail to diversify. I found myself living only to drink at one point and I had to reinvent myself as a sober person to get past it. Another problem is the loss of culture and social life that results from switching from street drugs to pharmaceuticals. I personally never was into pill mills and big pharma but some people I know switched over and didn't have any friends except doctors and nurses which in my opinion is a lower quality of life than a bustling drug scene.

The "Rat Park" study was interesting but, humans aren't rats (duh). It's nice to think about what drugs would look like in an idyllic bolo-bolo type world because the alienation from the manufacture of them & the limits on their proliferation would be drastically different (so, in that world there would just be less drugs to go around). The amount of land you need to grow some of them & the chemicals you need to make some of them would either be absent without our current marketplace (no centralized chemical production) or utilized in other ways (ie, land used for food production, or just left as wilderness).

The social isolation aspect that has a compounding impact on addiction would also be lessened in such a world (you do live in a somewhat stable community of 500). Also lessened would be the alienation from specialized fields of study/production (ie, not a whole lot of what makes up daily life in that idyllic world is off-limits to people so, probably a lot less boredom & repetition).

If a persons' (or bolos' for that matter) worth is based on reputation & you have some kind of semblance of community that doesn't drop the ball on you then it seems like those are other reasons that addictions might not play out like they do in this dystopian world.

In a world like Bolo-Bolo there would probably also be less of a reason to make yourself seem "edgy & cool" which is probably one kids experiment with drugs in the first place.

"The "Rat Park" study was interesting but, humans aren't rats (duh)."
YOU FOOOOOL, OH YES THEY ARE YOU HUMANIST CRAWLING BIPEDAL PIECE OF HOMINID EXCREMENT (SHIT) ALL OF THE PILLS AND CHEMICALS HAHA I AM ON ARE derived from tests on cuddly little rats Heheheeee SO DON'T YOU DECLARE TO THE WORLD WE RAT LOVERS HAHA ARE DUH NOT HUMAN OHHH NOO YOU DONT MY BROTHER was born in a laboratory and they filled him full of inhibitors cancer cell annihilators and mega pain destroyers at 50 times the recommended dose AND HE SURVIVED HAHA SO THEREFORE I COULD BE CURED FROM THE DISEASES CAUSED BY THE TOXIC CAPITALIST INDUSTRIAL MILITARY COMPLEX HAHAHAAAA human were cannibals before the humanist christians MADE THEM WEAK SNIVELLING FUCKING RAT HATERS THEY BLAMED THE PLAGUE ON US HAHA but it was their own filthy living standards in crowded merchantile societies the proto-capitalist squalor of London WE RATS USED TO LIVE CLEAN LIVES IN COLONIES BESIDE THE RIVER AND HELPED CLEAN UP THE HOMINID FILTH OF HUMAN SHIT WASTE so take it easy on my rat family they are soooo human hahahAAAHHAaaaaaHaaaAAAhhhhhHaaaa!!

I worked for 15 years in a secretive elite military division specialized in carrying KILL tasks all over the globe within 3 hours. We got operatives working for the Command in the world's major cities, just waiting in their private spas in high-rise luxury lofts with tigers, Neomesopotamian deco and prostitutes of all ages, races and creed (including communist and even anarchist) to fuck whenever they want. Yeah and we get the finest meat and Scotch whiskey from every region. When I joined the service they were calling me Tough Guy.... but when I left it for joining the private corps everybody who knew me... they called me Tough Guy Killer. We don't care about you internet tough guys as just with one snap of fingers we can storm your place and turn you to ashes before you even call your mom...

if i was jealous i wouldn't have said anything...that's how much of a celeb i am, i don't want anyone to detect my resentments cuz that will drop my sales hardcore, especially when i use this forum as my only place for spamming and advertising yo

Thecollective do a good job deleting caustic rants its better than the bland sites where everyone is falsely polite even when a neoliberal thread is spreading its toxic nauseous message which I find more disgusting.

Joking aside though, it is true that the building of a relationship and intimacy between people is spoilt and made toxic by alcohol or tranqualizers. There is nothing worse than having a drunk slobbering and groping with ones body thinking they can just invade sovereign individualist space because they are so dumbed down by drugs. Courting and getting to build relationships is meant to have that chaotic anxious element in it, not the head strong demanding patriarchal drunk approach.

Meant by horny people listening to their chaotic breeding instincts to fornicate and perform their genetic duty to the species survival by reproduction anywhere and with any other member of the OPPOSITE SEX hahaaa even wives or men who are married or amoral.

often like drugs, is part of that chaotic anxious element...and yeah i don't know where op is going with this, sometimes alcohol is just a social activity, where the users aren't drinking enough to get really "fucked up", op is just ranting some straightedge bs, drugs and alcohol are not THAT BAD, the people who use them are waaaay worse, i don't exclude myself from this

all things in moderation, including moderation, see how i moderate this saying to make it less paternalistic? But whatever, I ain't no celebrity, LeWay just is prone to spastic bouts of religious exuberance and poetic prose

I had a host of fair weather friends. No matter how antisocial I became there were always people to hang out with. After I quit drinking I continued to smoke for another year and there were still people around though a different crowd. When I quit smoking nobody ever came to see me again.

i have a feeling you would really love the movie eXistenZ, this touches on so many of the issues that you struggle with. Imagine plugging in a biological video game system into your body as a spinal tap, made out of the guts of frogs! Good shit

that is some truly ignorant generalization right there. first of all, alcohol and tranqs only? what about meth or other uppers?

but primarily, your broad brush is pathetically lacking in bristles. are you aware that:

a) different drugs have different effects on different people
b) doing drugs of any sort does not equate to overuse of said drugs. overuse is completely subjective, but i would say that overuse of any drug - whatever "overuse" means for each individual - is probably not giving one the most useful effects of the drug. unless the drug is morphine and one is using it to purposely kill themselves.

believe it or not, your apparently very limited exposure to the wide variety of drugs and people using them, has given you a massive case of myopia. no need to generalize and moralize when all you are really seeming to want to say is: it ain't cool to get slobbered on by a drunk. i would agree with that.

I have a place for cars if they are older and parts are freely available and they can be worked on and repaired by oneself and used just for long journeys which have to be made carrying many things *takes a bow* But push bikes are better and now I find myself seduced by the new electric motor assisted pushbikes.
But best of all, the foot play of perambulating, the supreme mode of travel.

sound interesting. I never had a car until I was 30. I always got a ride to work and rode bikes or skateboards. I wish I didn't have a car because everything requires maintenance but I have to. I keep a car, bike and longboard operational.

Bikes do require more or less regular maintenance, especially with the loads of crappy recycled rubber that were spread on the markets these days. Tho the huge difference with cars is how they're easy to work on, and the parts are pretty cheap. Afaik, any means of transportation you can't move around with your own body is bad technology in the first place.

Not sure that's the right way to analytically frame it. Rather messy chaotic production due to lack of proper management and lousy business practices.

These bikes are abandoned for the same reason they'd be in the Western cities. Municipal public bieks are CRAP, lol. Nobody except yuppie idiots like to ride these bulky, heavy, unstable monstrosities. Get a decent '70s chromo road bike for 50$ off craigslist or some street thug, then use a community bike shop to maintain it, maybe turn it into a fixe, and you'll have a great urban transport for years that costs you a fraction of what a city bike does while being twice as fast.

"X: Straight Edge and Radical Sobriety is Gabriel Kuhn’s highly anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed Sober Living for the Revolution. In this impressive volume, Kuhn continues his reconnaissance of straight-edge culture and how it overlaps with radical politics. Extensively illustrated and combining original interviews and essays with manifestos and reprints from zines and pamphlets, X is a vital portrait of the wide spectrum of people who define straight-edge culture today."

giving up capitalism returns humility to a more elevated status. It's not who you know or your unique and genius innovations, but your egoist desire to be in service of other members of your IRL community and yourself. We can only "defeat" capitalism through this bare-bones reality.

reproductive labor is integral with the economy which couldn't function without it. If we can make money as anarchists without sacrificing our identities we could finance altruistic projects without being collaborators. There are some viable anarchist business models; bookstores, coffee shops, warehouses maybe even detox and addiction services since there's already some of that going on in places but without a substantial welfare state anarchy needs to be a business in order to keep growing.

i agree, within the status quo it needs to be a business in order to subsist, let alone keep growing. but business as a mode of subsistence, or growth, and even the notion of “growth” itself, has been put into question and contested from different perspectives.

yet this proposal is more sensible than the other outlandish things you like to link. i’m not sure it’d do anything to challenge or change the status quo, but more jobs and needed services amirite. it’s valid as anything else.

A tepid response but I'll take it as a compliment. You must have read me when I was C¥B€RPØ$!T!V€. It comes and goes, sometimes I put on my anarchy hat and talk shop plus I live on the gulf coast which is a world away.

that anarchists need to participate in capitalism, i have to make money just like everyone else here, of course the concept of how anarchists function within the capitalist economy is something that needs to discussed (not this broad idea, but i leave it up to people to talk about how they could be better making money, or making money in a better way)

No one has to MAKE money. When land and food is free as it was in the indigenous economy, there was no work or wage currency, there may have been bartering standards, but not money per se.
Now leave me alone to my meditations within my zone of grace, I don't want either of you two chatterboxes disturb8ng my tranquil repose, mmkay!!

i find moralism to be a far more interesting "addiction" than other drugs, in terms of how it impacts the thoughts and actions of others. i would much rather do a project with a "functional" addict than a ("functional"?) moralist.

AA typically means "functional" also just as generically being able to show up at a job and be normal. The biggest thing about AA is that you come in and identify as "an alcoholic", if you don't do that it's mostly just going to feel incredibly pointless. I joined GA a little bit when i had a gambling problem in my early 20's.

There's been a lot of journalistic work that shows that the AA approach only works in the long term for about 10% of its members, for the rest all the moralistic talk about alcohol and addiction just makes them want to drink again.

was safe harbour in early recovery but eventually I began to chafe under the conservatism so I moved on. When I got an uplink to the outside world I wasn't so dependent on the program and now I stay busy with forward progress so I don't sink in the mud.